To My Readers: Thank You for Your Interest

Thanks for the interest, especially those of you who follow from locales outside the "Great White North".  I hope I am able to provide you with both a Canadian view of events across the country and around the world, as well as a selection of articles I have found to be interesting.  Please feel free to e-mail me with any thoughts or comments, and I always enjoy reading comments on the various posts.  And, if you can (safely?), add the location you're posting from.

Thanks again,

James Phieffer

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Denying reality in Greece | Economy | Financial Post

By Tim Shufelt - from the National Post

To fix Greece, a modern country built on the ruins of past civilizations, is to impose a modern financial blueprint on the ruins of its failed economy.

Greece is insolvent. That’s due, in part, to ingrained deficiencies that have long kept the country deeply uncompetitive.

Prevailing over those forces will prove an historic challenge, but one that should, in theory, not differ essentially from that facing any failed enterprise, including other countries that have fought back from default.

Yet after billions in bailout money and more than one year into its crisis, Greece has made roughly no progress. In fact, its problems have worsened. The debt burden has increased, the country’s relationship with the rest of Europe is being poisoned by every bailout dollar thrown down the well, and the government has lost all credibility with the Greek people, making austerity and shared sacrifice politically impossible.

Greece has become a casualty of an economic and currency union that lacks political unity. The reduction in principal the country requires is a non-starter for European officials, who seem primarily concerned with protecting Greece’s major creditors. Meanwhile, the Greeks themselves seem unable or unwilling to face up to their own fiscal realities.

A glance at Greece’s books is enough to convince any objective observer that a restructuring of its debt is crucial to the country’s recovery, said Alex Jurshevski, founder of Toronto-based Recovery Partners and an expert in sovereign restructurings.

The Greek debt load sits at about €330-billion ($450-billion), or almost 150% of its GDP.

“If Greece has to refinance its entire debt at today’s coupons, it would be immediately bankrupt,” Mr. Jurshevski said. “It couldn’t pay those coupons, it would crowd out all other government expenditure, the government would fall, there would be riots on the streets, and their paper would be worthless.”

But what must be done and what has been done are worlds apart, he said. Europe’s political powers instead advocate “bailouts” to fund short-term debt payments and austerity to improve fiscal conditions.

“The whole game from the get go has been to preserve the bank’s capital in this whole equation. There hasn’t been a bailout of the countries under financial pressure, it’s been to preserve the banks’ financial solvency that have lent to these places. Nothing more,” he said.

Read more...

Denying reality in Greece | Economy | Financial Post

Libby Davies as a Minister in a Layton government?

    Tim Powers published an article today in the Globe and Mail speculating on who might be in the cabinet if Jack Layton were to form a government.  I just about choked when he mentioned Libby Davies as Minister of Foreign Affairs.  This is, after all the NDP MP who demonstrated a remarkable ignorance of history when she stated that the Israel has been occupying Palestinian territories since 1948 (the year Israel came into existence) and that "it’s the longest occupation in history".  She was caught on video making these comments at an anti-Israeli government protest in Vancouver on June 5, 2010.


    Now, were Ms. Davies to have checked her history, she would have found the Israeli military didn't move into the West Bank and Gaza until 1967, as a result of an imminent threat of attack by Jordan, Egypt and Syria.  So, for example, Tibet, which has been occupied by communist China since 1950, has been occupied far longer.  In history, other longer occupations include the German annexation of Alsace-Moselle (from 1871-1918), the Russian (Soviet) occupation of the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia)(1940-1991, broken by the German occupation of the area from 1941-1944), and the Allied occupation of Berlin (1945-1990).


    She also would have found that from 1948-1967 the West Bank and East Jerusalem were occupied by Jordan. 


    The key point here is that, for all that Jack Layton wants to show his party as being ready to lead, this is a party which has not yet shown itself to be "a government in waiting".  Had a member of the Liberal or Conservative caucus displayed such blatant bias against the existence of the state of Israel, along with a ridiculous lack of knowledge in the areas of history and geo-politics (and an apparent unawareness of the existence of Wikipedia, where she could have checked her facts before embarrassing herself), said member would have at the very least been publicly admonished and demoted by the leader of their party.


   
Instead, the only member of her party to call her out was Thomas Mulcair, who earned the enmity of other NDP MPs and supporters for his efforts.  And the question also must be asked - was Jack Layton's refusal to remove her from the post of deputy leader (a position she holds to this day) a sign of tacit agreement on his part with her basic views (if not her blundered exposition of same)?  Is an NDP government one which would take the side of Palestinian radicals (aka Hamas) against Israel, for all the talk of "even-handedness"?


    The fundamental question the voter is led to is this:


Is the NDP under Jack Layton fit or competent to lead Canada as Prime Minister?  The evidence says not.

Robert Fulford: Mao outmurdered Hitler and Stalin combined | Full Comment | National Post

Yet the most recent analysis of Chinese sources indicates that the crimes of both Hitler and Stalin were surpassed, to a hideous degree, by Mao.

Frank Dikötter’s highly credible book, Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 takes readers into the darkest corner of the Mao era, when he was attempting to reorganize Chinese society from the top. Beijing directed the central planning of everything from fertilizers to steel production, according to the theories of ignoramuses who were loyal communists. It now seems obvious that Mao’s beloved project became the worst man-made disaster in human history.

Robert Fulford: Mao outmurdered Hitler and Stalin combined | Full Comment | National Post